Government's
serving mainly corporate and institutional
interests over human and nonhuman
animals' interests causes suffering,
threatens civilization and all life,
and undermines the Constitution
of the United States, the Bill of
Rights, and the state constitutions
established in accordance with the
Constitution. People in government
have authority and opportunity to
change that by making humane treatment
of animals public policy rather
than choice. Responsible Policies
for Animals shows people in government
how they can help to do that.

In every
area where government is failing -
human physical & mental health,
ecology, climate, food safety, violence,
war, poverty - inhumane treatment
of nonhuman animals - human use, ownership
and destruction of other animals -
is a root cause of the big problems,
and humane treatment offers the best
solution. The Framers of the Constitution
sought to establish justice, promote
the general welfare, provide for the
common defense, and secure the blessings
of liberty to the people and their
posterity. Government is not fulfilling
those purposes today. One reason is
the failure to extend basic rights
to nonhuman animals. None of the Constitution's
purposes is likely to be fulfilled
until all sentient beings have rights
that protect their basic interests
in personal and ecological sovereignty.

In order
to achieve ratification, the Framers
initially preserved slavery and ignored
the plea to "remember the ladies."
But they provided for expansion of
rights beyond the property-owning
male citizens who initially had them.
Basic rights were eventually extended
to women; slavery was abolished; and
the right not to be property of another
was established. Primary human rights
were bolstered by many secondary rights
articulated in statutes and court
decisions. Despite fear of expanding
rights, in every case it benefited
society as a whole and those who had
dominated others who eventually obtained
rights.

Nonhuman
animals, like human beings, are biologically
"hard wired" for liberty
and autonomy. When individual rights
expand to include all sentient beings,
human beings will benefit - and it
is doubtful the U.S. or humanity as
a whole can progress ethically, spiritually,
or materially until that happens.
Today's industry-government-media
complex, subordinating human interests
to corporate interests and crushing
the spirit and the physical, mental,
economic, financial, and ecological
wellbeing of U.S. citizens and people
worldwide, is undermining the U.S.
Constitution, state constitutions
established in accordance with it,
and the rights our government is entrusted
with protecting.

Recognizing
that (1) humane treatment of animals
is a human value that can only be
fulfilled when nonhuman animals have
basic legal & constitutional rights
starting with personal and ecological
sovereignty, (2) inhumane treatment
of animals causes and exacerbates
the big problems besetting human beings
today, (3) the industry-government-media
complex, especially the animal-welfare
system, continues to move the human
world further from humane treatment
of animals, and (4) people in government
have authority and opportunity to
move society toward humane treatment
of animals, Responsible Policies for
Animals (RPA) works to help government
bring policy and practice into accord
with humane principles and thereby
with the Constitution and the public
interest.

Subordinating
the public interest to corporate and
money interests based on inhumane
treatment of animals, government today
rejects the animal-rights movement
out of hand, refusing to understand
the human need for animal rights and
the fact that without such rights
humane treatment of animals is not
possible. This myopic approach undermines
the Constitution and the public interest
and threatens all life.

Consumer
culture - driven by the industry-government-media
complex to benefit short-term private
money interests over the long-term
public interest - locks people into
pseudo-choices that harm people and
other animals alike. RPA helps people,
including in government, recognize
which industries should no longer
be sanctioned because of their destructive
nature. People in government cannot
serve the public interest and uphold
the Constitution unless they stop
supporting inhumane industries.

RPA discusses
specific matters with people in government
when possible. Whether communicating
with RPA or not, people in government
can help move communities, states,
the nation, and other societies that
aspire to rule of law and rights-based
government in the right direction
by adhering to some basic principles:

»
Work to remove public support - subsidies,
purchases, institution funding, employee
reimbursements - from inhumane industries,
including meat, dairy, egg, fish,
feed-crop, pesticide, animal-experimentation,
oil, blood sport, and others. This
includes ending our land-grant universities'
support of the meat industry (see
RPA
Factsheet #1). The meat
industry is the most inhumane, unhealthful,
and ecologically destructive. Human
beings are natural herbivores and
evolved as prey, not predators or
hunters as is widely believed - the
latter being cultural not biological
developments. (See "The Comparative
Anatomy of Eating" by Milton
R. Mills, M.D.; Man the Hunted
by Donna Hart & Robert W. Sussman;
Plant Roots by Rex Bowlby;
The Food Revolution by John
Robbins; The China Study by
T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D.; "Now,
It's Not Personal! But Like It or
Not, Meat-Eating Is Becoming a Problem
for Everyone on the Planet,"
Editors, World-Watch, July/August
2004.) Serving the meat industry is
not in the public interest; ending
public support of it is.

»
Support policies and practices that
use as little land, fuel energy, and
other resources as possible; diminish
sprawl, car dependency, and the human
ecological footprint; and accord respect
to human-scale over large-scale endeavors
and the commonwealth over private
concentrations of wealth. This
includes taxing land rather than "improvements"
and eliminating corporate rights,
which came to exist through a misrepresented
Supreme Court case, not an actual
Supreme Court decision. (See Small
Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher;
The Geography of Nowhere, Home
from Nowhere, and The Long
Emergency by James Howard Kunstler;
Power Down by Richard Heinberg;
Unequal Protection: The Rise of
Corporate Dominance and the Theft
of Human Rights by Thom Hartmann;
Give Me Liberty! by Gerry Spence.)

»
Avoid objectifying human beings as
consumers, constituents, patients,
etc., and respect them as individuals,
nurturing their functions as citizens
exercising reason and ensuring that
public schools place education over
indoctrination and training. This
includes campaigning with detailed
speeches and essays, not mass media
and fliers; not accepting donations
above token amounts the impoverished
can afford; putting human interests
above corporate and institutional
interests; addressing root causes
of problems; and basing decisions
on the full range of available knowledge.

Subject
to suffering and the full experience
of life - being sentient - nonhuman
animals, like humans, have demonstrable
interests in not being made to suffer
needlessly and in not being prevented
from living according to their biological
nature, in their species' original
natural ecosystems. In addition to
violating animals' interests by using
countless billions of them in countless
ways and treating others as if they
don't matter, humans are driving other
species extinct at 100 to 1,000 times
the rate preceding agriculture - a
disaster also for humans and other
surviving animals. Human beings are
experiencing astonishingly high rates
of physical and mental illness, and
are ever-increasingly perpetrating
violence and laying groundwork for
further violence.

Those problems
arise from inhumane treatment of animals.
Humane treatment would go a long way
toward solving them. People in government
can help Americans exercise their
liberty, creativity, and pioneer spirit
to move beyond make-believe solutions
that hack at the branches of evil
rather than strike at the root. Or
they can let us continue adrift in
so many wrong directions. RPA urges
people in government to serve the
public interest and uphold the Constitution
through humane treatment of animals.